


when we die, we will die (with our arms unbound)

by queenfanfiction



Series: nothing so rare or precious [6]
Category: Fake News RPF, Pundit RPF (US)
Genre: AU: political dystopia, DARK DARK DARK, F/M, FNFF SeSa, Multi, angst runs strong in my korean blood, bessemerprocess is the muse for all dystopia!fic writers, gratuitous bombed-out wastelands, or not it's ambiguous really, prompt!fic, spoilers: EVERYONE DIES, stephen is such a geek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenfanfiction/pseuds/queenfanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard, sometimes, to remember exactly what it is they're fighting for, but Keith manages somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when we die, we will die (with our arms unbound)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bessemerprocess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/gifts).



> Title from the lyrics of "[This Is Why We Fight](http://youtu.be/oLSOzcEQjiE)" by The Decemberists. Huge THANK YOUs to the mods of FNFF for giving me a chance to repost this, and to my ever-fantastic beta [sarken](http://sarken.dreamwidth.org) for putting up with my frantic tweeting well past 3am. Written for [bessemerprocess](http://bessemerprocess.dreamwidth.org) for [FNFF](http://fakenews-fanfic.livejournal.com)'s Secret Santa 2011 (original post here). Thank you for such an awesome prompt, and for writing some of [the best dystopia!fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12667) to inspire me in that direction in the first place. <3

_Stephen had been the one to give the group a name, back in the day when George W. had still been President (unfortunately, they had thought then, but now they all know better). He had scribbled on a cocktail napkin with his pen, the flimsy paper crinkling underneath his fingers, before holding up the three-lettered acronym he had written for all to see._

_"The Pundit Round Table," he said, using the back of his pen to point out each letter as he defined it with a word. "See, it's 'cause—well, 'cause we're like King Arthur and the Round Table, only none of us are knights, but we're all working nights. Nights, knights—get it?"_

_"But, Stephen," Jon protested, "we're only sitting at a round table now because that's where they sat us. What if they sit us at a regular one next time?"_

_"That's ridiculous," Stephen scoffed back. "Clearly they would never sit five people at a rectangular table, that would leave a seat open."_

_"We're not always five," Rachel reminded them. "Richard's one of us, too."_

_"Yeah, but he's never here, so he doesn't count." When Rachel glowered, Stephen quickly added, "I mean, he counts, but he doesn't COUNT. Technically, he's not a pundit. See what I mean?"_

_"What do you mean, he's not a pundit, neither are yo—"_

_"I like the name," Anderson interjected before Rachel could bite Stephen's head off any further. "It's got a good ring to it. What does everyone else think? Should we go with the name?"_

_Keith hadn't objected, and Rachel had muttered her consent while kicking Stephen under the table, and Jon had been too busy laughing to say anything one way or the other, and that had been that._

_Later, much later, long after Obama had been elected (fortunately, they had thought at the time, but now they all know so much better) and shortly after he had been deposed, Stephen is the one to suggest another name—this time for a different purpose. The Pundit Revolutionary Team. It doesn't have quite the same ring as 'A-team,' but it will have to do._

_Stephen doesn't write out the name this time, and no one has the heart to ask him why._

~

Even taking into account the thrum of constant shelling overhead, it has been a fairly quiet day.

Keith keeps to himself, mostly, watching the quote-unquote news from FOX as it streams online throughout the day. His headphones are resting low around his neck, one ear left open the better to hear if someone should require his attention. But other than the sounds of Jon coughing from a room away and Stephen going back and forth between the toilet and the common room with heavy, limping footfalls, there has been nothing to distract Keith all afternoon.

This is actually a good thing, though Keith remembers (fondly) a time when he would have shot himself before watching five consecutive minutes of Faux-News—but then, this is most certainly _not_ that time.

Finally, Keith grunts and closes his laptop with a satisfying _snick._ Listening to FOX takes a toll on his brain, and right now he wants nothing more than to crawl under a blanket and sleep forever. But at least there hadn't been many announcements between news segments—just the usual bull about fighting homeland terrorists and whatever unsavory epithets FOX was calling them these days—and the few names that had been mentioned Keith hadn't recognized, so he supposes it could have been worse.

When he shuffles out of his room and into the tiny kitchen down the hall, Jon is already there, mixing something that is bubbling in a pot on the gas stove. "Are the others back?" Keith asks, though he would have already known if they were.

Jon shakes his head. "I thought I'd get started on dinner anyway, though. We can keep it warm until then, and—"

Jon breaks off in a fit of coughing, a spasm that lasts long enough until he is doubled over and clutching at the stove with one hand for support. Keith looks away, uncomfortable.

~

_Keith often thinks, when the news from FOX gets mind-numbing enough that he can listen without having to pay attention, that he and Jon should have been outside, out with the others; but Keith is getting too old for running anymore, and Jon had never been in the health for it to begin with._

_Jon had always gotten sick more often than anyone else, even before they'd been driven underground, but now he's had a lingering cough for weeks that never gets better, only slowly and progressively worse. Everyone knows that it's got nothing to do with the asthma Jon uses as his standard excuse, including Keith and especially Stephen, but no one can come up with the medicine or the resources (or the freedom, if they're honest) to do anything about it._

_Jon knows this, too, and so he quietly goes about his business without much complaint; and when he coughs everyone pretends to be suddenly busy with something else, and when he wipes his mouth with a rag everyone tries not to notice the dark stains that appear by the time he chucks the used cloth into the trash._

~

Jon is just straightening up and catching his breath when Stephen limps back into the kitchen. "Everything okay?" he asks, looking from Jon to Keith and back to Jon again. "I thought I heard something."

Jon gives Stephen a weak smile. "Nah, I'm fine." He thumps his chest, then winces. "Stupid fucking asthma can go die in a fire."

"Right," Stephen says, clearly not believing it, before heading back to the common room where he'd left his shortwave radio and headset, awkwardly hopping on his good leg with his opposite hand braced against the wall to guide him.

~

_Stephen should have been out with the others, as well, but enemy fire had taken care of that for him the last time he'd been on a mission several days earlier._

_He'd been screaming bloody murder when Anderson and Richard carried him in, but he'd stopped screaming long enough to gasp hoarsely, "They didn't take my manhood when they took my leg, did they?" Everyone had laughed at that, even Jon, and Rachel had cracked a grim smile even while she worked on sterilizing her knife. Stephen had laughed along with them, too, but he'd had to stop when Rachel started to gouge deeper into his leg to dig out the bullets—because the last thing they needed in their makeshift, not-even-close-to-standard field hospital was an infection that might leave Stephen without a leg at all._

_They had no proper antiseptic, much less any anesthesia, but Anderson had scrounged up some cheap whiskey that served for both; and Stephen got through two-thirds of one bottle before passing out from the pain or the alcohol, Keith was never sure which. And when Stephen woke up the next morning, complaining of a roaring hangover, Rachel had offered him four now-clean bullets as keepsakes of his ordeal._

_He had politely declined._

_Now Stephen putters around their headquarters, as he insists on calling it, and curses colorfully whenever his bandaged left leg bangs into something; and Keith has to look away from that, too, because he'd been the one to suggest that Stephen go out after the others in the first place._

~

Keith wanders into the common room, where Stephen is now sprawled on his back with his injured leg awkwardly flung out to the side. "Anything new on the airwaves today?" Keith asks, settling himself on the ratty couch that Anderson had dragged out of some landfill outside of Manhattan. The springs are weak and the smell of mildew is overwhelming when he leans back all the way, but no one else is complaining so Keith decides not to bring it up.

"Nope." Stephen gropes to his right until his hand grabs a ragged copy of the day's _Daily Mail,_ the crossword section, and he holds the limp page above his head so he can read without having to sit upright. "Looks like Ollie and Sam want to talk tonight."

"Well, we can't do anything until the others get back." Keith catches the discarded crossword when Stephen flicks it towards him, mentally filling in several rows and columns while Stephen rolls onto his side and proceeds to attack the sudoku on the following page with a vengeance. "Be sure the channel's secure. Don't want anyone listening in on us tonight."

"I know what I'm doing!" Stephen flushes, then bites his lip. "Sorry, I—getting a little stir-crazy here, I guess."

"Yeah," Keith says, though inwardly he knows that's not the reason why.

~

_In the early days, Hodgman had laughed outright at the very idea of shortwave radios being used as a mode of communication._

_"What is this, the Cold War? Actually, don't answer that," he added when Jon opened his mouth to respond. "My point is, why use a thing of the past when we live in the future?"_

_"Like what?" Keith demanded, and Hodgman had grinned at him before holding up his iPhone._

_"Mobile phone signal scrambler," he announced. "And yes, Apple did have an app for that."_

_The app had worked surprisingly well, until that one night where Stephen had accidentally toggled it off instead of on; and when Hodgman went out on a reconnaissance mission with three others the next morning, only one of them returned._

~

Keith is ready to leave Stephen to his sudoku when, from somewhere above them and their shelter, the metal door to their hideout opens with a grating crunch, then slams closed dully.

Keith waits until footsteps thump down the stairs beyond the common room before going for the rifle he keeps against the nearest wall. "Who's there?" he barks. Stephen looks up with a start, but keeps silent—until the intruder identifies himself or the potential danger has passed, that is always what they all do.

"It's me," a voice calls back, followed by Anderson himself limping into the common room with a bulging burlap sack slung over one shoulder. He looks absolutely exhausted, his hair damply sticking together and even whiter against his dirty clothes and darkened skin.

Jon comes out from the kitchen, wiping his hands dry on a dishrag. "Did you get everything?" he asks Anderson.

"Everything and then some, yeah." Anderson heaves the bag onto the floor, where it lands with a loud clank of cans. Jon immediately gets down on his knees to paw through the hoard, muttering something about needing more beans for dinner.

Keith turns to Anderson. "Have you seen Rachel?" he asks in a low voice.

Anderson shakes his head. "I'd have thought she'd be back by now," he says, his voice just as low as Keith's and grittily hoarse. "What about Richard, is he—"

"No," Keith says, and Anderson's face falls.

~

_Richard had finally returned to New York on leave for the first time in several years, just in time to surprise Rachel at her birthday party._

_"No, it's not a joke, this time," he had reassured her with a smile. "I've got two months. I won't even know what to do with myself!"_

_"Oh, I'm sure Rach will be able to help you with that," Keith had rumbled, and Rachel laughed while Richard blushed—and Keith saw from the corner of his eye that, unexpectedly, Anderson had gone slightly pink, too._

_As it turned out, Richard didn't even get a week before the Obama administration collapsed. A bloodless coup, FOX News had reported, though Keith has his doubts—not just because no one had laid eyes on the President or the First Family or any of Obama's cabinet ever since, and not because FOX wouldn't tell the truth to save its collective life, but because if there is one thing the transitional Tea-Party-militant government had never been short on, it's blood._

~

Keith stands in the doorway of their hideout, peeking out cautiously from behind the half-open sheet of metal into the dusky-red twilight. He has no watch anymore, but he counts the time with his pulse, and after a hundred heartbeats nothing has changed. The sun is still setting, a red ball of fire now half-swallowed by the horizon, and all Keith can see is a bombed, charred wasteland of twisted metal and brick rubble—but there is still no sign of Rachel or Richard.

Keith sighs and, once he has safely pulled the door shut behind him, turns to trudge back downstairs where the others are waiting. When he enters, Anderson and Stephen look up at him expectantly, but he shakes his head. "Nothing," Keith tells them, hating himself even more when their expressions crumble from hopeful into something else. "I didn't see them coming."

"We've got to go find them!" Stephen starts to struggle to his feet, only to be shoved back down by Anderson's firm hand on his shoulder.

"Stephen, you can hardly walk. I'll do it." Anderson turns to look at Keith again. "I didn't see them on my way back. Which way did they go?"

Keith hesitates. "Central Park," he admits after a beat. From his corner, Stephen makes a choked spluttering noise, and Anderson's eyes grow a fraction wider. Keith hadn't meant to keep them in the dark, but the opportunity had arisen so suddenly that there really hadn't been the time to inform anyone else. It wasn't every day that one had the opportunity to break into the military barracks where most of the government's classified information was stored under heavy guard, and the opportunity was far too good of one to miss. "One of our people on the inside was supposed to hand over some intel about the next big air strike planned for Atlantic City," Keith explains now, well aware that Jon is now standing in the doorway behind him, listening with a strained expression. "Oliver wanted to know so he could tell his guys to move out in time—that's why he wanted to talk tonight, I think, to arrange the drop-off."

An uncomfortable silence follows for some moments. "I'd better go now," Anderson says, a beat too late, and he is already moving towards the stairs when Keith stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Ten minutes, Andy," Keith says, soft enough that the others won't hear, and Anderson's eyebrows shoot up even higher at the rare use of his nickname. "Give them ten more minutes—then go."

Anderson gives Keith a long look, then nods jerkily. Keith releases the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding before letting Anderson go.

Ten minutes is even too much. Before half that period is up, the door upstairs grinds open and shut again; and Keith barely has time to go for his gun before Rachel shouts down the stairs, "Guys, I could really use a hand up here!"

The unhidden panic in Rachel's tone makes Keith freeze in his tracks, but Anderson pushes past him and disappears into the stairwell. "Jesus fuck, _Richard,_ " Keith hears Anderson say, and a few moments later the three of them come out of the stairwell together, with Anderson helping Rachel hold up Richard between them.

Richard looks like shit, like Death hadn't even thought of warming him over. His shirt is jaggedly tattered and stained with drying blood on most of his right side, and he barely reacts when Anderson gently lowers him onto the ground. Stephen scrabbles out of the way as best he can to make more room for the newest patient.

Rachel doesn't look much better, if Keith is going to be honest, but at least she is walking and conscious. Her left shirtsleeve is gone, ripped off to provide an emergency tourniquet to slow Richard's bleeding. She is pale, her lips drawn as tight as the worried crease on her forehead, and part of her face is spattered in blood that is hopefully not her own; she seems to feel the blood's presence and thus keeps wiping her cheek with the back of her hand, but it only serves to smear the half-dry blood into a perverted sort of warpaint under her eyes.

Jon drifts out of the kitchen, halting just behind Keith as he takes in the scene. "Jesus," Jon breathes, echoing Anderson. "What the fuck happened to you two?"

Rachel grimaces. "Drones," she says, spitting out the word. "We were fine until they caught us on the way back—and then _someone_ here thought it'd be a good idea to jump in front of me."

Richard's eyes flutter open, and Rachel drops to her knees beside him when he coughs. "You're—one to talk," he mumbles thickly. "Told you—go on—without me."

"Richard, _shut up,_ " Rachel says, her voice rough, as she brushes Richard's damp hair from his forehead. Keith does his best to ignore the tremor in her fingers, and to make himself believe that she is not crying.

~

_"The Best Fucking Recon Team," Wyatt used to declare whenever he had the chance._

_"Ever," Olivia would add a beat later, and Aasif would always stifle his laughter in her shoulder._

_Keith wasn't sure that he could judge how good they actually were; but good or not, the three Daily Show correspondents were by far the most optimistic of them all. Wyatt nearly bent over backwards in his efforts to make his friends smile, and Olivia's bright laughter rang through their shabby hideout to make even the darkest times seem a little more bearable. As for Aasif, he tended to blend into the background—but always in Olivia's background, and Keith could understand why Jon fondly called the pair his lovebirds._

_The three correspondents shared a sleeping room next the one Keith split with Rachel (by network, they had decided at the beginning, until both Richard and Anderson lost their roommates and chose to split the odd room between them rather than bear their mutual grief alone). Some nights, after everyone else had gone to bed, Keith would lie awake and listen to the muffled murmurs of Aasif and Olivia's whispered conversations, a pleasant rhythm that underscored Wyatt's resonant snores and Rachel's gentle breathing in the bunk beside him._

_And then, one day, the Best Fucking Recon Team (Ever) went out on a routine mission and took Hodgman with them, and it wasn't until late that night that Aasif limped back as the lone survivor._

_They had been ambushed, Aasif had explained while Rachel and Jon worked on patching up his injuries, by soldiers and weaponized drones both. Wyatt and Hodgman had been killed in the first round of fire, their bodies collected as trophies by the enemy side; and though Aasif had managed to find cover, he hadn't been fast enough to get Olivia out of the way in time._

_"She made me leave her," Aasif had moaned, holding his head in his hands as if it hurt him to even remember it, rocking back and forth no matter how much Jon begged him to be still, goddammit. "Said she'd shoot herself if I didn't go. For fuck's sake—God, what else was I supposed to do?"_

_Keith didn't have an answer for that, nor did anyone else._

_Later that night, Stephen had turned the radio on just in time to hear Glenn Beck read off the names of the convicted 'terrorists' who had been executed earlier that day. When Beck pronounced the name "Lisa Munn," he said it with such obvious pleasure that Keith wanted nothing more than to scrape the smug bastard's small brain out of his open skull with a dull spoon, a feeling seemingly shared by the others if their furiously-horrified expressions were anything to go by._

_Aasif had locked himself in his room for days after. When Keith finally convinced Aasif to let him in, he had hardly recognized the half-starved, bedraggled and bearded man, aged by his grief so much that he now looked as old as Keith. "Don't do this to yourself," Keith had urged him. "Don't waste your life like this. Olivia wouldn't—she'd never have wanted that."_

_Aasif had responded with a hollow chuckle that no longer had the mirth it once did. "I won't be wasting it, don't worry," he said hoarsely, then nodded to a folded sheet of paper resting on top of his unmade bed. "That's for you. Not like it makes any difference now, but—don't read it until later, all right?"_

_Keith didn't, not until they discovered Aasif missing the next morning, along with several grenades and a semi-automatic that the group had been stockpiling in a spare closet just in case, and long after FOX News reported the assassination of one of the top Tea Party generals on one of the army bases located mere blocks away from where "The Daily Show" used to tape. The news didn't reveal that they'd captured the assassin until after they executed him without even the pretense of a court-martial, but they did post the video clip of the execution (by firing squad, against the background of a brick wall that could very well have been anywhere in New York City) on their website, later bragging that the viewership had soared past the million-mark by the end of the first day. One of those viewers had been Keith, it being his responsibility to keep up with the so-called news on the web; but he didn't have the heart or the stomach to make the others watch with him, and he certainly didn't tell the others that Aasif had had a smile on his face and Olivia's name on his lips in the last moment before they shot him._

_When Keith finally did unfold the paper Aasif had given him, he was struck by the simplicity of the handwritten prose, and he belatedly understood what Aasif had meant when he said it no longer made any difference. The paper was Aasif's unofficial last will and testament: half of his belongings were left for his parents who had fled to India long ago, and the rest were to be given to Olivia._

~

They eat in the kitchen that night, the four of them crowding around the stove, slurping beans-and-beef stew out of the scrubbed soup cans they use as bowls and scooping up what is left with the dry, cracker-like bread Jon had baked with what little flour they were able to scrape together ("Of course I know how to make unleavened bread," Jon had sniffed when Keith asked, early on. "I may be secular, but I'm still _Jewish._ "). They do not speak, the silence broken only by Jon's coughs and Anderson's throat-clearing, but the silence isn't nearly enough to keep them from hearing Richard's muffled moans as Rachel works on him several rooms away.

Anderson excuses himself as soon as he finishes, and Stephen limps off to work on setting up the radio in the common room, which leaves Keith to help Jon clean up the kitchen for the evening. Once he's done, he takes a can of soup that Jon had set aside for Rachel and heads towards Richard's room to give it to her; but he stops just outside the bathroom when he hears voices echoing inside under the noise of running water.

As he tiptoes closer to the door, Keith catches the end of Rachel's sentence through the half-open door: "...going to be fine."

"Rachel, _fine_ isn't good enough!" Anderson sounds agitated, a stark contrast to how calm and composed he usually is in front of everyone else. "You know how bad he was when you brought him back. What if he goes into shock, or he gets an infection, or—"

"Do you think I haven't thought of all that already?" Rachel's voice rises, just before the water turns off with a slamming suddenness that reverberates through the walls. "That's all I've _been_ thinking about! But there isn't anything else we can do—not here."

"Then take him to a hospital," Anderson says, and to Keith it almost sounds like he's begging.

"What, do you want to take him?" Rachel barks a laugh. "We're numbers two and three on the nation's Most Wanted. You think Richard isn't on that list, too?"

"But we can't just let him die!"

"We're not going to let him die!" Rachel shouts back, the last word cracking on the edge of a shriek. "Jesus, Anderson, I'm doing the best I can! It's not like I'm a goddamn _doctor!_ "

Keith winces, and from the sharp intake of breath inside the bathroom, he can tell that Anderson does, too.

"God." Rachel sounds shaken. "Anderson, I—look, I didn't mean—it's not—"

"It's fine." Through the crack in the doorway, Keith can see Anderson turn away from an ashen Rachel. "Don't bother."

Keith quietly sneaks back to the kitchen before Anderson can see him, soup still in hand. Rachel can get her own dinner later.

~

_Sanjay Gupta and Brian Williams didn't know it, but their fates would have them both arrive and leave within a day of each other._

_Brian had been first, always first. One of the few survivors of the federal raid on NBC headquarters after the government had declared all media outlets (with the notable exceptions of FOX, CNBC, and CNN) to be considered terrorist-harboring organizations. Brian had escaped the carnage with the help of a loyal intern, who had been killed by drones en route within the day; but Brian had somehow made his way to the hideout of the Pundit Revolutionary Team, battered and filthy but relatively (physically, anyway, if not mentally) unscathed._

_Sanjay, on the other hand, had found them completely by accident. While the CNN exception had saved him from immediate death, everyone knew it wouldn't be long before the government started tracking people down by their voting records; so Sanjay quietly sent his family overseas while staying behind to help wherever and however he could. He worked with rebel smugglers to ferry both refuges and the medicine to treat them, and he made nightly rounds of the city to care for those patients with liberal tendencies who did not seek medical treatment for fear of being arrested by the police in their very hospital beds._

_Sanjay had been on one of those outpatient rounds when he'd stumbled upon the entrance to their hideout. He had descended the narrow staircase, thinking to see if there were any hidden patients that he'd missed, only to be met halfway by the muzzle of Keith's rifle. Thankfully, Keith had the good sense to ask first and hold fire unless necessary, and Anderson had been near ecstatic to see Sanjay alive and (for all intents and purposes) well._

_"I thought you'd left already," Anderson told Sanjay as everyone crowded around the newest addition to their team. "You haven't been blacklisted yet, have you?"_

_Sanjay shook his head. "No, I can still get out if I need to," he said, jaw tight. "But why would I want to? There's so much I can still do here to help. You know what it's like, Anderson—" Sanjay gestured vaguely upwards. "The war's right in our own streets. Why should I try to run and hide from it when I can still help others get away?"_

_Keith had thought otherwise at the time—what good would it do if one wasn't even alive to fight for the cause?—but Anderson had nodded, his eyes burning with that fiery fervor he always had when he was in the most dangerous of situations, and Keith couldn't bring himself to contradict either of them._

_Five days after losing Aasif, Brian had gone out with Anderson to collect supplies; and Anderson had returned before sunset that evening, grim and alone. "Separated by drones," he had told them tersely. "I think Brian might have been hit, but I'm not sure."_

_"I'll get him," Sanjay said, waving away Anderson's protests. "You just got back. I can find him myself. Won't take long—I'll be back before the sun goes down, I promise."_

_Sanjay didn't return before the sun went down, nor before the sun rose again the next morning. When Anderson went out with Stephen to look in the daylight, they found Sanjay in the gutters some four blocks away. The damage to his face and general decomposition had been so extensive that they almost hadn't recognized him, but when they finally did Stephen had reportedly been sicker than he'd been after his first frat party in college; and while Anderson hadn't thrown up, he had taken the news just as badly (or worse) and hardly spoke for weeks after._

_They never did find Brian's body._

~

By dint of much hopping and cursing, Stephen has managed to move the speaker-and-microphone system from its storage place in Keith's room into the common room, where he now sets up the equipment as if to project to a miniature-scale, semi-circular amphitheater.

Keith takes a seat closest to the central microphone, directly behind Stephen's chair, while Anderson lays out the chairs in hemispheric rows. "You've got the right channel?" he asks Stephen, who is putting the finishing touches on his Sudoku from the _Daily Mail._

"Course I do." Stephen hauls the transmitter closer to him, his tongue pushing out his cheek as he fiddles with the signal and tuning dials. Static and half-garbled syllables sputter through the speakers while everyone else drifts into the common room and take their seats: Anderson closest to Keith, Rachel farthest, while Jon lowers himself between them with one last muffled cough. Richard is not here, still knocked out from the morphine Rachel gave him, but Keith is sure that one of them will be able to fill him in on what he missed when he wakes up.

Keith resolutely decides not to think about the possibility of Richard not waking up.

The static suddenly clears, and the five of them lean forward as one, straining to hear anything across the airwaves that might break the crackly silence. Finally, there is a soft click, followed by a woman's voice that resonates clearly on each word. "Grey Havens, signing in. Rivendell, do you read me?"

"Rivendell speaking," Stephen says, bending closer to the microphone. "Reading you loud and clear, Grey Havens."

"And Valinor requesting leave to join," adds another voice on the channel, this one male with a striking British accent. "Hope I'm not interrupting the party."

"Never." Stephen grins. "Good to hear from you, Ollie."

"And the same to you, good sir," John Oliver says, clearly grinning back, and for one fleeting moment Keith can almost believe that they are back to the good old days once more.

~

_As always, it had been Stephen who had come up with their codenames._

_England was the final destination for most of the American refugees, a promised land where life went on almost normally despite the religious fervor of its police state daughter across the pond. Canada was no less normal and by far easier to reach, but it was dangerous for refugees to stay there any longer than necessary, especially when the American border police treated the Canadian law with as much respect as they did any other law governing human rights; and thus did Canada come to serve as the best stepping-stone to England that the refugees and rebels had available to them._

_Sam and Jason had been visiting family in Toronto with their children when the Obama administration had fallen, and John Oliver had managed to flee to Britain with his newly-married wife during the first few days of chaos that had followed. Both Sam and John, then, became the international contacts that the Pundit Revolutionary Team maintained during their early work in ferrying refugees out of the country: from their hideout to the Canadian border, and from Sam's Grey Haven across an ocean to John's Valinor. After Hodgman's death, when either of them wanted to establish communications with the team, they published a coded message in their respective country's newspapers: the invitation to call would be part of the day's crossword clues, and the number of the channel in the first few numbers of the sudoku puzzle._

_Initially, Stephen had wanted to call their hideout 'Bag End,' since most of the place ran underground. It had once been the basement of a Cornell University dormitory, back in the day, before the students had staged a mass sit-in on the campus' main quad to protest the regime change. In response, the transitional government had chosen to declare them all traitors to their country and, rather than waste money by sending negotiators or riot police, had delivered bombs to them in the most direct way possible. There wasn't much left of the university after that, but several dormitories had just barely survived the air strike with parts of the ground floor and all of the basement still intact. Once Anderson and Richard had refitted their front door with enough sheet metal to withstand a battering ram, it hadn't taken much more for the place to feel safe enough to consider 'home.'_

_But Rachel had said no. "Are you sure that's such a good idea?" she asked, frowning. "Didn't Saruman invade Bag End and use it to make all of Hobbiton uninhabitable?"_

_"You take things too literally, Maddow," Stephen had grumbled, but nevertheless he agreed to change the name to 'Rivendell': the last Homely House east of the mountains and west of the sea, and the one shelter that the enemy would never find, no matter how hard they tried._

_Keith could only hope that the name would prove its meaning as true in real life as it had been in fiction._

~

"The latest shipment arrived yesterday," Oliver is saying, using coded metaphors to confuse anyone who might be listening in unwanted. "Nothing damaged, so that's all good, at least. Anything else you've got on inventory?"

Stephen looks to Anderson, who shakes his head. One of his responsibilities (along with scavenging for food and other needed supplies) is to keep an eye out for any survivors, any refugees looking for a warm meal, a place to stay, or a way out. But, more often than not in the past weeks, Anderson has come back empty-handed in this regard. Since they sent away the last refugees that Oliver just received (a mother with her two children, the girl slightly older than her younger brother, and their resemblance to Keith's sister's family makes him ache inside just to think of them), there has been no one else sharing the hideout with the six of them.

"No," Stephen says. His mouth is tight and twisted, and Keith is sure that Stephen's train of thought is running along the same lines as his own. "But we could use a little help on the medical front, if you've got anything."

"Noted," Sam says. A baby's wail leaks into the channel from the background, but the noise stops when she shushes it off-mic. "Sorry about that—Piper's been fussing all day," she apologizes once she comes back. "Rivendell, we're going to send out the next shipment tomorrow, it should be there the day after. Same drop-off point as always."

"Great, thanks." Keith nudges Stephen to get his attention and, when the younger man turns, gestures for Rachel to give Stephen the item that Richard had risked his life to recover. It doesn't look like much: a simple flashdrive, black and battered and hanging from a ratty red lanyard, that couldn't possibly hold more than a gigabyte—but even those few bytes of memory are immensely crucial to their cause. "Actually," Stephen says, toying with the flashdrive while choosing his next words carefully, "I think we've got that special order you guys asked for."

"Fantastic." Oliver's grin is almost audible now. "That was sooner than I expected."

"We pride ourselves on our delivery speed," Keith cuts in with a wry grimace. "We'll be sending that out to you on the return shipment, then, if Grey Havens won't mind running it to you direct."

"I'm ready whenever you want me, Rivendell Alpha," Sam purrs, drawing some appreciative laughter from the people on Oliver's channel, and Keith can't stop himself from a chuckle.

"Fantastic," Oliver says again. After a beat, he adds, "Rivendell Alpha, I'll be talking to you again soon. We need to work out the details on that project we discussed last time."

"Looking forward to it," Keith returns, then nods to Stephen to end the call.

But before Stephen can touch the switch, Oliver says, "By the way, Rivendell, your daughter asked me to send you her love. Says she and her brothers are fine—the youngest misses you something awful."

Stephen visibly tenses, and it is a long while before he can reply. "Thanks," is all he can manage at last, a faint whisper that even Keith can barely hear. "That's—right. Good. Thanks."

~

_It was almost ironic, Keith thought, that all of them had known enough of where they stood in the eyes of the new regime to send their loved ones out of the country as soon as possible without once thinking of getting out themselves. A journalist's mindset was hard to break, clearly, or maybe none of them had really believed that it could get this bad, this fast and for this long; but regardless of their reasons, it remained that all of them were now paying for their shortsightedness, twice over and with interest._

_Keith's sister had left for France with her family by using her husband's name, which had saved her the interrogation and possible detainment that so many were facing when they boarded airplanes bound for countries abroad these days, and Rachel's partner had done the same without ever once breathing that she was related to anyone named Maddow. Anderson's mother had moved to England without anyone even attempting to try to arrest a Vanderbilt, and as far as Keith knew Richard's ex-wife was still in Egypt and hadn't been touched by the political upheavals in the country where her former husband lived._

_But while Jon's wife had been able to hide behind the commonness of her last name, Stephen's family had been less fortunate. Evelyn McGee-Colbert was taken into custody by the border police when she attempted to drive across to Niagara-on-the-Lake, and their three children were sent to live with Stephen's relatives in South Carolina until Oliver managed to wrangle their smuggling to England. Evelyn was court-martialled by the government, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment; then, with much publicity, she was transferred to the high-security federal prison in south Texas, where only the highest-profile political enemies and their families were kept and put to hard labor to pay for their crimes against the country. It was a bad business all around, but Keith was thankful that at least her status had saved her from being placed in the labor camps of Montana and Arizona, where the conditions were far worse and the death rates much higher than anyone was willing to admit._

_Evelyn spent several months serving her term, much to the agony of her husband in hiding, and it wasn't until the half-year anniversary of her trial had come and gone that Oliver and Sam had been able to coordinate a break-in to rescue her. The attack ended up causing the deaths of several military guards and prisoners, but except for the numbers FOX News refused to go into detail pending further investigation; and Stephen went half out of his mind with worry when, for the next week following, there was no word of his wife from either England or Canada._

_Finally, Oliver requested contact, but this time with Stephen alone._

_Keith never found out what Oliver had said exactly, but he knew enough once he saw Stephen stumble out of the vacated common room and blindly grope his way towards his own bedroom that he shared with Jon. The others agreed that it would probably be best to let him grieve in his own way, and they all left him alone until he was ready to come back again. He did come back, eventually, but when he did he was no longer the brash Stephen who was afraid of no man or government or lying news organization. He was quieter, more thoughtful, more cautious; and if anyone else noticed the sharp graying that had exploded from his temples and made him look more like Jon every day, no one ever said anything about it._

_The official report came from FOX a few days after Stephen recovered from the news. Keith watched the video online by himself. Katy had been recruited by the main FOX network some time after they had fired and arrested Shepard Smith for insubordination and plots of treason (that were no doubt trumped up, if Keith knew anything about how they worked); and as he watched his old girlfriend read the names of the dead without a flinch, Keith wondered if she was really as cold as her onscreen persona was making her look and if he'd just been too blindly in love to notice, or if those were really tears that made her eyes sparkle in the light from the cameras._

_It wouldn't make anyone live again either way, but still, Keith wondered._

~

"Keith." Anderson's tone makes him stop halfway out of his seat, and when he looks up everyone is staring at him—everyone except Stephen, who is twirling the flashdrive in his hands and pretending not to pay attention to the tension surrounding them. "What was Oliver talking about?"

"It's nothing," Keith says, gruffer than he means to be. "You don't have to know until it comes up." But when he makes as if to leave, Rachel blocks his way.

"I beg to differ." Her eyes are flashing dark fire—of anger, and of worried despair, Keith reads from her face as he matches her, stare to stare. "You kept your secrets before, and look where that got Richard." When Keith bites his lip, her stance visibly softens. "Please, Keith," she says softly, but the room is quiet enough that everyone can hear every word. "Tell us. Don't keep us in the dark this time."

Keith exhales noisily. "There's a thing," he starts after a long moment, aware when the others lean closer to hear him. "Oliver's idea. FOX's been crowing about the planned airstrike all week, so it won't be long before they do it. He thought that if he could get enough firepower down to the rebel base in Atlantic City in time, keep the main army distracted for long enough—"

"Yes?" Anderson prompts when Keith hesitates. "Then what?"

Keith rolls his shoulders, and the socket pops loudly to punctuate the silence. "Then the rebels could infiltrate the army base in Greenwich," he says. "Fill in where they left, as it were. If we win, that's going to cut hard against both the enemy morals and advantage." Another hesitant pause. "I asked to lead the attack."

"You!" Jon stares, the most disbelieving of them all. "You want to lead this? What if the attack goes bad? What if—"

"Then I'll die knowing I've at least done something!" Keith roars, making the others flinch. "I'll die, knowing I didn't just spend all my time cowering in a hidey-hole and sending everyone else out to die instead! I'll die, alone if I have to, and I won't care—because maybe, just maybe, that might make a bit of fucking _difference!_ "

The echoes of his last words are only just starting to fade when Stephen rises up from his seat and lays a hand on Keith's arm. "You won't die alone," he says, quiet and firm. "If that's what you want to die for—then I'm with you."

"And I," says Anderson, his hand on Keith's shoulder.

"And me," pipes up Jon, coming up behind Stephen and guarding Keith's back.

Keith looks to Rachel, and she smiles back at him even though she is silently crying. "Oh, Keith," she whispers, "when am I ever not with you?"

And for Keith, that alone is enough.

~

_It is a dream that he has had frequently enough for the last several weeks—a nightmare, he would call it, if it didn't have such a wonderful ending—and the repetition makes him wonder if it's supposed to be some sort of sign._

_It always starts out with Keith alone, in the hideout, waiting for the others to come back—from something, he wasn't sure what, that was the problem with these damn dreams, they were never ever specific about anything—and pacing the common room, back and forth, over and over, until he swears he could see his footsteps tracking in the cheap and muddy carpet. He goes into the kitchen to check the clock, repeatedly, but the time on the stove always flickers the same numbers at him—different ones, in every dream, but the same no matter how many times within the dream he goes to check._

_Finally, waiting becomes too painful for even him, and Keith goes upstairs to see what he can find. He doesn't forget to grab his rifle on the way out, and it makes him wonder (within the dream) what it means when even his subconscious is ready for war._

_And then he walks out the front door and really, really wishes he hadn't, because everyone is there. Stephen, Richard, Jon, Anderson—godfuckingdammit, even Rachel. The five of them are lying in the ruined street, flung this way and that, cut down by an unheard menace while he was sitting, standing, waiting for them below without ever knowing that his friends were being tortured, shot, killed above._

_He runs to them all, saying their names like that will be enough to bring them back to life, but they are dead. All of them. Stone cold, bloody, dead. Rachel is the farthest out of them all, fallen in such a position that suggests she had tried to run away but couldn't make herself leave the others; and she stares up at Keith and the sky beyond with wide-open eyes that are accusing in their emptiness._

_Keith can't stop himself from howling, one long and unending scream of agony, before falling to his knees beside Rachel's dead body—but, as he falls, the scene changes faster than he can blink._

_He lands on his knees, not on hard unforgiving concrete, but in the soft green grass of fresh spring. The smell of death and blood are gone from the air, and in its place a light breeze brings with it the scent of flowers and meat roasting on the grill—and if Keith strains hard enough, he thinks he can hear a bird singing somewhere._

_"Keith!" He looks up, and Rachel is waving him over with barbeque sauce on her fingers and a grin on her face. She is sitting at a picnic bench with the others, all five of them, and the seat next to her has been left open for him. "Come on, you're going to miss all the food! Don't expect me to save anything for you!"_

_Keith heaves himself to his feet and trots over obediently, taking in his surroundings and slowly realizing that they are in the backyard of Stephen's old house, where he had once invited them all for a Memorial Day barbeque. He sits down next to Rachel in time to catch the end of Jon's punchline, and while the others laugh he takes a moment to study his friends._

_Everything is as it once was, seemingly, and what is not is sufficiently healed to be forgotten about. Jon no longer coughs and has enough breath to talk animatedly for minutes on end; and though Richard is a little stiff on his right side, he hardly shows it when he leans against Anderson and laughs heartily at Jon's last witty jab. Stephen is as gray as Jon, now, but the youthful happiness in his face is more than enough to compensate; and Anderson is the same as always, but now he no longer looks as hunted or as desperate._

_But Rachel—Rachel shows the greatest change of all of them. Her eyes are practically glowing with a light they haven't had since everything went to hell and came back, and her voice has regained the bubbling vivacity that had captured Keith's attention (and, if he is truly honest, his heart) so many years ago. When she smiles her whole heart is in it, and when she laughs—oh, how wonderful it is when she laughs!—no one can resist laughing along with her._

_Keith wakes with Rachel's name on his lips and her joyful laughter still ringing in his ears, and there isn't much he wouldn't do to make his dream be real._

~

Anderson goes to his and Richard's room earlier than usual, and Rachel follows him shortly after. She mumbles something about wanting to make sure that Richard is okay through the night, and Keith lets her go without protest. He can deal with sleeping alone, and Richard (and Anderson) surely needs her (and Anderson) more than he does right now.

He waits until Jon shuffles out of the common room with Stephen leaning on him for support, their usual roles now reversed, before reaching into his pants pocket. It takes him a few moments, but he manages to carefully extract a crumpled-up cocktail napkin without doing the already-wrinkled paper any further damage. He doesn't even need to look at the napkin to know what's written on it, after the innumerable times he's already studied it before; but he does it anyway, to complete the nightly ritual he has done for nearly every night since they came here.

There isn't much on the napkin, other than three letters of the alphabet, each downstroke broad and bleeding wide across the paper, and the roundness of the letters growing faint on the edges where the pen skipped across an uneven surface. Keith knows the letters by heart, after all this time, but that doesn't stop him from tracing the outline of the faded writing with his own finger.

_P. R. T._

It isn't much, those three letters, but it is enough to remind Keith every time exactly what it is he is (and what they all are) fighting for.

"Hey." Keith turns to find Anderson leaning in the doorway, watching him. "You going to bed?"

"Yeah," Keith says, and he stuffs the napkin back in his pocket—but he doesn't let go.

When Keith finally goes to bed, he is still holding on to the crumpled napkin, tight and warm in his fist like an amulet; and when he does fall asleep, for this night, at least, he does not dream.


End file.
